Newspaper War, Waged a Character at a Time; Chinese-Language Dailies Battle Fiercely in New York

By JOSEPH BERGER

Published: November 10, 2003

During the blackout in August, reporters for the city's four Chinese dailies did not have electric generators to see them through the night. But that did not stop one of them, Ming Pao Daily News, from trying to best its rivals.

The half-dozen reporters in the Chinatown bureau of Ming Pao wrote their stories in longhand on a large table inside a generator-powered Holiday Inn.

One reporter then walked with the stories uptown and across the Queensboro Bridge to the newspaper's main office, in Long Island City, where five editors who had camped out overnight typed them into the computers as soon as the electricity came back on at 5:15 a.m. By 10 a.m., the papers were in readers' hands.

''I can proudly tell you that Ming Pao was the first to get the paper out on the street and free to everyone,'' said Xiaohui Hu, the newspaper's deputy editor in chief.

The World Journal, another Chinese daily in New York, has its own story of newspaper-war resourcefulness. For weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Chinatown was blocked to traffic, so The World Journal carted newspapers to its readers there by hand truck.

And three of the Chinese dailies crow over how they tore apart their front pages when Madame Chiang Kai-shek died late on Oct. 23; they informed their readers of the death by morning, a day before most other newspapers reported it.

Although some of the city's 300 ethnic newspapers may have a languid, less-than-fresh feel, the Chinese press is aggressive. And the competition is about to get more cutthroat. The Oriental Daily News, among Hong Kong's biggest newspapers, is considering coming to New York City to become the fifth Chinese daily.

So zealous is the rivalry among the dailies for news (and so tight their budgets) that each reporter has a quota of 2,000 words, or, more precisely, 2,000 characters, to write each day, often in two or three stories. The China Press also requires its reporters to shoot three usable photos a day.

''The quality is not so good, but it cuts down the cost,'' explained I-Der Jeng, its editor.

For the city's 360,000 Chinese and Chinese-American residents, the Chinese-language dailies (and the dozen weeklies) provide generous helpings of news about compatriots in China, Taiwan and Chinese communities elsewhere.

The newspapers regularly parse politicians' moves to measure the impact on the half-century battle over the identity of Taiwan. But they also teach immigrants about American peculiarities like potluck dinners and sleepovers. They explore options for bringing relatives to the United States under opaque immigration laws.

''Our headline today is that the Homeland Security Department requires that, starting next spring, all foreign students have to pay $100 to get into this country,'' said Joe Wei, the national desk editor of The World Journal. ''In other newspapers this is going to be on Page 43.''

The Chinese newspapers tell new arrivals about jobs and apartments in Chinese neighborhoods. They specify which schools are high-performing and where to find SAT cram schools.

''You want to buy a Cadillac, instead of going to Potamkin you look through the ads for someplace in Queens run by a Chinese person,'' said Peter Kwong, professor of Asian-American studies at Hunter College. ''They can explain the deal better.''

Of course, the dailies chronicle the same news as English-language newspapers: the rape charges against Kobe Bryant (since the arrival of the Houston Rockets' Yao Ming, basketball has become a big sport among Chinese-Americans), a new drug to combat breast cancer, or an announcement by City Hall.

The newspapers also run a lot of articles on crimes against Asians. Wendy Cheung of The World Journal is proud of the scoops she gets from detectives she has cultivated in the Fifth Precinct in Chinatown.

Just as in any good newspaper war, each of the Chinese newspapers is dismissed by the others. The World Journal is called an apologist for Taiwan, The China Press a mouthpiece for mainland China, Sing Tao Daily a tabloid-like scandal sheet, and Ming Pao a small nonthreat.

In each case, the truth is more complicated.

The World Journal, a division of the 50-year-old United Daily News Group of Taiwan, set foot in the United States in 1976 and now has papers in New York, San Francisco and nine other cities. With 25 reporters and 12 translators in the New York area, it is the reigning powerhouse in North America.

''We positioned ourselves as The New York Times for overseas Chinese people,'' said Tina Lee, the paper's assistant president.

Ms. Lee, 31, a graduate of Stanford University Law School, is the granddaughter of T. W. Wang, the founder of the United Daily News Group (and a friend of the Chiang family). She estimates that her paper has 90,000 readers in New York and 360,000 nationally.

Many readers, she says, are highly educated and high earning, and, despite the paper's origins in Taiwan, a majority are from the mainland. Like circulation claims made by the other newspapers, hers are hard to verify, since the newspapers do not submit their circulation to audits.